The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Diet Culture, Eating Disorders, Food Addiction & Accountability With Molly Carmel

Episode Date: September 15, 2020

#294: On this episode we are joined by Molly Carmel. Molly Carmel, LCSW is the Founder and Director of The Beacon Programs in New York City, an outpatient program that helps people with compulsive overeating, food addiction, and eating disorders find permanent solutions. On today's episode we discuss diet culture, eating disorders, food addictions, and how we can take personal accountability to help find permanent solutions.  To connect with Molly Carmel click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by BETABRAND and their Betabrand dress pant yoga pants. To try these pants go to betabrand.com/skinny and receive 20% off your order. Millions of women agree these are the most comfortable pants you’ll ever wear to work.  The episode is brought to you by AncestryHealth  Your inherited health risks don't have to stay unknown. Learn if you're at lower or higher risk for some commonly inherited conditions linked to breast cancer, colon cancer & heart disease, with AncestryHealth. Find out what your DNA says about genetic risk with AncestryHealth®. Head to Ancestry.com/SKINNY to get your AncestryHealth® kit today! This episode is brought to you by Function Of Beauty One size fits all may work for your accessories, but when it comes to your hair we all need something a little different to help us look our best. What if your hair care was as unique as you are? Function of Beauty is hair care that is formulated specifically for you. No matter your hair type, they create shampoo, conditioner, and treatments to fit your unique needs. Head over to www.FunctionofBeauty.com/skinny for 20% off your order today! Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to The Skinny Confidential, him and her.

Aha! What do you do when you don't want to do what you're supposed to do? Like we all know like what it is to like eat clean or whatever that means. But what about the days that you don't want to? How do you get back on? It's like that's really relationship forming. Well, well, well. Happy Tuesday.

Boy, have we got an episode for you. I am very excited about this. We have Molly Carmel. She's made it her mission to help people find a sustainable solution to battle obesity and related eating disorders. She struggled with her own eating disorder for 20 years, and she found no solution in any of the treatments. So she created The Beacon, where she helps her clients recover from similar addictions. She received her bachelor's in social work from Cornell University and her master's from Columbia University School of Social Work. She has extensive training in dialectical

behavior therapy, addiction, and nutrition. She also wrote the book Breaking Up With Sugar. We're going to get into it into this episode. It's a very real conversation, and I hope if you or anyone you know is struggling with an eating disorder or addiction, that this episode can point you in a positive direction. This one is a long one. We get into it, so we're going to get right to it. Let's meet Molly Carmel, the author of Breaking Up With Sugar. This is The Skinny Confidential, him and her. I was feeling called to eat chocolate chip bagels with extra butter in the dark while I watched Housewives. So that's why she's so cute. That's what she is made from chocolate chip bagels. But

she kind of is. Sam's bagels, Whitney Port recommended them and I just had an addiction to them. We ate so many. I mean, I just did it because I wanted to be a good partner. Like I better eat some bagels with you. Those bagels are, they're dangerous because. Did you gain the same amount of weight? I gained 55 pounds. When I left the hospital, 20 fell off right away. But it was not one of those things where everyone's like, oh yeah, I threw my jeans on that I had and walked out. I know no one like that. Some people say that. And I don't know if people are either lying about it or they really did. And whatever it is, that's fine. But for me, I really wanted to showcase like what I was actually going through. And I still have 20 pounds to lose. And it's been

seven months. It's hard. It's not a joke. And I can't stand when people say I was I'm running after my kids and the weight just fell off. Well, that's like when people say, I just switched to skim milk. I can't. Yeah. Oh, I cut dairy. Right. And everything just fell off. I'm breastfeeding and it just dropped off. And by the way, if that's you and that happened, God bless. I'm like, I'm jealous. That's amazing. But for me, that's not the case. Yeah, yeah. So introduce yourself to our audience. Give us some context about what you're all about. Sure. I'm Molly Carmel. I'm a licensed clinical social worker. I am a food addiction and eating disorders therapist. So I have two specialties, addictions and eating disorders. I've been in eating, I've been in this field, which I always think I'm like 22. So when I say I've

been in it for 20 years, it really frightens me and came to it completely honestly, right? So my story parallels my profession. I struggled with food and weight from the age of, well, from when I was born. My dad passed away really tragically, actually drove off a cliff in Big Sur. And when I, you know I found that information out, it actually is what kind of started my unhealthy relationship with food. I think if you looked at my family tree, there's plenty of donuts and bagels in it and lots of obesity. So I think I came to it naturally biologically. And then I think some of that trauma really informed the relationship with food. How old were you when that happened?

Right shy of three, right shy of three. And so my mom would say like at four, I was kind of all about like, you know, where the donuts were the bagels. And so food was really soothing me and numbing me from a really early age. Did you understand what happened to your dad at that age? Or was it? I don't think so. I mean, I think I, my mom tells the story of like that when I was four, and I asked where my dad was, I was like, well, how could he have done this to me? I think another conversation for another time, I think that's a really spiritual break in that moment.

I do think outside of food and weight, I think this is very spiritual for a lot of people. I think this is very emotional and very spiritual. I think you got to deal with the food first because it's hard to do the emotional, spiritual work when you're trapped in an unhealthy relationship with food. But I think it's a pretty comprehensive problem. I think we can see that culturally. Anyway, so my mom put me on my first diet at seven. No harm to her, right? I just didn't know what to do with me. I think she was outmatched. Seven. I know. I went to a nutritionist at the age of seven. Wow. I know. I know. Did you know what you were doing at seven? You know, I remember it actually so well because I sort of couldn't stop

eating and they were giving me like, you know, oh, here's what a portion size of turkey is. And I'm like, I can't stop eating. Why are you making me color pictures of Mr. Peanut? Like, this is so weird. So I actually knew in that moment that like, I wouldn't say it like this, but a nutrition intervention was not like the thing. The other problem with that was that my relationship with dieting started in that moment, right? And so the parallel of having this really unhealthy relationship with food and this really unhealthy relationship with dieting kind of turned into such a mess. And I got stuck in that cycle really early that so many people I think struggle with, right?

Like getting looped into the beauty of like, oh, this will cure me. This will save me. Going on this diet, you know, the diet failing me, losing maybe a little bit of weight, but then gaining a bunch of weight after that, you know, turning to food, which, you know, for me was sugar and flour 100% of the time. And then deep demoralization, deep pain, I think really morally, like something's wrong with me, right? Something's wrong with me. And that was a cycle that went on for years and years and years and years, right? And, you know, my story got really gnarly. You know, I weighed 325 pounds, you know,

had a really loose relationship with life, like just didn't, you know, my story got really gnarly. You know, I weighed 325 pounds, you know, had a really loose relationship with life, like just didn't, you know. And so part of what happened along that way is in some of those moments of quiet, I had this knowing, one of them being 13 years old when we went to – when my mom sent me to weight loss camp, which was amazing and fun, but also part of that diet cycle, right, that just ran me and fed me and read me and fed me and never ever taught me anything. Like I just needed to know what to do. And I had this knowing when I was 13, actually, that I really wanted to help people to like solve this problem. And so along

this path, and it was, it's really interesting. It's kind of like that, you know, wounded healer sort of thing. It's like, I was gaining weight and, you know, all these nasty binge cycles and also helping people and working at weight loss camps. And I started a boarding school for adolescent obesity when I was 24. And still no solution and still no solution. And kind of this double life at the time, too, because I was like an actively eating disordered eating disorder therapist. When you say you had an eating disorder simultaneously while you were helping people, was it anorexia? Was it bulimia? Was it orthorexia? Or was it something that you can't describe? No, I think it was pretty solid binge eating disorder. Like I couldn't stop eating. And then I think along the way I picked up all of them right and I was failing through

conventional diets left and right no one I didn't do I was failing through nutritionist left and right I was failing through ashram I mean there no stone left I mean I ate my way through bariatric surgery I mean I had bariatric surgery and ended up gaining like more than half of it back how old were you when you had that it was about 24 is that when you say bariatric, I think gastric bypass. That's right. So you got gastric bypass, you came out of it, and then you just kept eating kind of. Yeah. But did it make you lose the weight or no? I lost some of the weight. And then about five years in, I, you know, you get your stomach back. And so I just started binge eating again. It's really interesting. Side note, I was so ashamed of this part of my story that I almost didn't put it in anywhere.

And what I'm finding is there are so many people who have this part of the story. And it's like they are finding such solace from that vulnerability Me Too piece. I carried more shame about this. Because they don't feel alone, right? Like, that's the biggest thing is like, if you feel alone, and you feel ashamed, like, then you can't start to heal, because you can't start to talk about it. But if you feel like, hey, there's a community here that understands what I'm going through, like, maybe Lauren and I might not relate directly to the story, but hearing it and presenting it to people like, that's the whole reason we do this is like, if there's somebody that hears something,

right, it can help. They're like, oh, but but you know i think that more people if they have like that's the human part of all this like people want to hear the vulnerable parts because they realize oh that's a human like they have issues just like me and i can potentially heal like them yeah totally what does it feel like when you go in for this surgery that you probably i would think is going to fix fix everything oh i was certain of it it. If someone said you're getting that surgery tomorrow, I'd be like, oh, I'm good. Right, count me in. So you get that surgery. And then what does it feel like five years later when you're binging again? Yeah, I mean, it was a medical solution for something that was much cheaper than that, right? A medical solution

for something that's emotional, spiritual, and I think also relationship-based. Breaking Up With Sugar, I use that title of the book because I think we've lost the idea that we have two relationships that we have to be in, right? One is with ourselves and one is with food. You cannot avoid a relationship with food. There's no possible way. And so I think I – listen, I mean, I think I was going to die. And I think I didn't have me to help me, right? So it was what I had to do at the time. It was a life-saving effort. I think it did save my life. And then I think, you know, I went back onto sugar and it took over, right? And that's how so is wins. And you see that happening a lot, but people aren't talking about it. You see people going for gastric and then it happens and no one's really,

no one's talking. I mean, there are people who are talking about it, but I think people aren't talking about it. You see people going for gastric and then it happens and no one's really... No one's talking. I mean, there are people who are talking about it, but I think people don't want to know that's true. They want to think it's a quick fix. There's something I think about all the time now. Recently, you know, obviously, we love modern technology. All of us, we use it. We're on this mic right now. We're looking on our phones. Like, obviously, there's medical advancements that can really help certain things. But I think, you know, for the longest period of time in human history, we didn't have this modern technology or these modern or this modern medicine, and you kind of had the only thing you had was the spiritual element, like you had to kind of go inward. And that's how our ancestors had to go and develop and deal with their issues.

And I think we've gotten to a place here over the last, let's call it like 250 300 years where you start to make these advancements. And maybe you forget about the human side of all this. What happens now is we're so focused on what's coming in the future and quick fixes and all these things that we can use that we forget like a lot of these problems can be solved by looking inward and figure out the spiritual side. But it's a much harder thing to do because nobody talks about how to do it. We don't know what to do anymore. And the spiritual side is kind of hard.

Like I'm a hardcore meditator. And I think across the board, it is kind of hard. I'm like a hardcore meditator. And I think across the board, it is one of the main solutions. It's also the oldest prescription of all time. But nobody knows how to do it anymore. Nobody talks about it. That's the problem. It's like, we've gone to the quick fix, and we don't do the hard work anymore. I guess that's my point. I love it. No, I think that's, I mean, I think a lot of what I sell in my book and in my programs is like, you know, long term relationship. And I think diet, you know, billion dollar diet culture is like, no, no, no, no, no, quick fix, easy 28 days,

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slash skinny. Drop into my DMs and let me know how you guys like it. All right, let's get back to the show. It sounds like a lot of your journey too was self-sabotage. Yeah. I mean, it's self-sabotage and I think lack of information. I think the problem with unhealthy, I would say for me, I am 100% addicted to sugar. And the thing about addiction is it tells you that there's nothing wrong. It actually says to you, no, no'm your solution I'm not your problem and I think if you look through the story of my story of you know redemption or whatever my story of creating a healthy relationship with food which I have today which is unbelievable because I'm the kind of girl that will like eat out of a garbage pail happily right and I just am peaceful and easy and happy

and I'm thrilled the common theme is sugar right because I'm always turning back to it I'm peaceful and easy and happy and I'm thrilled. The common theme is sugar, right? Because I'm always turning back to it. I'm always trying to make it into a part of my life. And so, and that's what they say in addiction, right? It says that it's your solution, but it's really your problem. So to walk the audience through your story, after you binged, after gastric, what ended up happening? So I'm this eating disorders therapist. I am living this terrible double life and where I'm binge eating, kind of gaining weight hand over fist, you know, dying to try to find something that works. I'm also prescribing at that time,

which was hip and hot, which is low fat eating and calorie counting, which, you know, we know today doesn't work. And I'm kind of, I'm coming, and by the way, it's not like I think me, you know, binging on muffins is the greatest idea I ever had. You know, it's not like I think, oh, this is so smart. But I am sort of coming close to being out of ideas. Like the shame is kind of boiling up. The self-hate is off the charts. And it's just, it's terrible. I also, in the midst of it, I'm working at a needing disorder clinic. I wolf down three muffins. I go, and it's not sitting with me. I go in the bathroom to throw it up, sort of bulimically, sort of not bulimically. My boss walks in on me and it was just like a moral low, you know, and she writes me this email like, hey, do you want to get some help for that?

And I said, hey, just went down the wrong pipe. Don't worry about it. And it was like one of those moments like where it's like I couldn't look at myself in the mirror, you know? And I had a couple of these along the way, but there are these moral moments where it's just like, wow, this is really going against my grain. You know, the story is like my brother decided to do paleo and he's like a big guy. And I was like, so out of ideas, so not wanting to give up sugar. But I was like, I don't know if Mikey can do it. Maybe I can do it too. And I stopped eating sugar. And the two things happened. Number one, I went through complete and utter detox. And as an addictions therapist, I knew like, that was something. You get sick?

Just like sweating, exhausted, irritable, cravings, that was something. You get sick? Just like, sweating, exhausted, irritable, cravings, like all the things you get, what I knew that you get when you detox from drugs and alcohol. I got all of them across the board. Were you expecting to detox from sugar? No. Okay. I was like, what is it? I thought you knew it was coming. You didn't. No, I didn't. Like, I didn't get what I was doing. Like, it just, I think it was pretty divinely inspired. But I was like, oh, this is more than a diet that's going on here. But the second thing is, I also very shortly after had all the freedom I was looking for, right? So I stopped having cravings. I started being able to navigate binging in a very different way. I had a bit more of a grip, like the hill that looked like it was like a mountain, maybe just looked more like an up ramp. It just felt more manageable. I did this other really crazy thing at the time, which I can't

even believe that I did, which is I had this clinic that was all low-fat eating. And I flipped it one day because I was like, I'm not helping these people. And there was plenty of research that supported it. I mean, I'm a scientist at heart, right? I nailed myself into the research. I got my mentors. I found my people. And I recreated my program and put it right in the clinic. And you ever see the movie Awakenings? It was like all the people started getting better.

All the people who were having the same problems as I was having were all like – like the way I describe when I broke up with sugar. And by the way, it's 11 years in now. No looking back, no interest in looking back. It was like going from seeing black and white to seeing color. That's you said something important that I think is important in any industry. You said you were doing it one way and then you realized it wasn't going right. So you switched the way. Yeah. I think it's important to be able to pivot and evolve no matter what career you're in and

know that like there's not only one way to do things and it's okay to change the way along the way. Especially when you're helping people. Yes. Like especially when you are somebody's guide in life. Like one of my core values in my organization is evolve or die and I am shameless about it. Like and I'll just say to people, yeah, I thought it was, and they got upset with me, you know? And I said, like, I am so sorry. But then they didn't when they started losing weight, I'm sure. And they started feeling healthier.

And they got freedom, Lauren. Like that's, when you're in a constant diet cycle thinking that you're the problem and you finally find the solution, it's a freedom unlike anything I can describe. And I've had the opportunity to break up with a lot of things along the way. Like I stopped drinking. I stopped doing, you know, stopped smoking cigarettes. I was pretty dark in my day. And it's like that was what it was about.

When I saw what was happening for me, I put all the pride aside. And it was research-based. It wasn't like, oh God, I have this idea. It was like, okay, so the food addiction is really a thing. A lot of the people that I'm working with are at the end stage of all of this, right? They're at the end stage of all of this. And it's like, let's do the thing. And I did it bravely. I just knew I had to. I couldn't sit and pretend. So how did you change your practice from a micro level? Were you giving out food plans? You stopped counting calories? Give us some context on how you changed. I literally changed. I love such a great question. Yeah. So I'd have people had these like little self-monitoring journals where they're like write down their calories. And again,

this is how I was trained. It's all I knew at the time. That's what everyone was kind of doing then, right? Yeah, totally. And I was selling these like, you know, low fat bar. I was doing the whole thing. I just, I one day walked in and I said, and I had conversations with people about it. Like, listen, this is what I'm experiencing. This is what the research is saying. It doesn't seem like you're getting better. You know, let's try it this new way. I had people say, I want to go back to low fat. And I was like, I will do that with you. Can we maybe do something parallel? Like, I got it. Like, you don't want to let go of the thing you think is working. It's so, this is sort of why I believe in order to make permanent change with food you have to divorce

dieting like no matter what your solution is with food you have to get away that diet culture is so deeply ingrained in us like we're always looking for this like easier softer better quicker fast and I almost think that divorcing dieting is harder than breaking up with sugar if you ask me. What do you think about a lot of women that I've talked to using like fen-fen and Adderall to lose weight? Listen, I had someone in my journey say to me this thing. When I couldn't find a shred of loving myself, I couldn't find it anywhere. Because, you know, the way you get self-esteem is to do esteemable and loving things to yourself. And I hadn't done an esteemable or loving thing to myself in a long time. And this woman looked at me and she said, listen,

think of the person you love the most. Do what you would do for her. For yourself. Yep. So this is what I would say to people who are taking Adderall and Fen-Phen. It's like, think of the person you love the most. Would you want them taking Adderall and Fen-Phen so that they could like lose weight and get skinny? This is, this can't be what this is about. Because there's no sustainability to that. Even if you look at the research around like the why, like the why, you got to access a really different part of your brain for the why. And I don't know, I think Adderall and Fen-Phen to get really skinny is like a form of self-harm. And why are we, we have big things to do in this world right now. We can't be doing it that way. And I think it comes back to the thing

we were talking about before, which is, and I think this is with every diet. When I think about myself and I'm not someone that would, I'm not in diet culture, but like when I was younger and I would have to, and I was doing sports, I was like, okay, like for this, I, you know, I boxed when I was a kid. I was like, I have to make weight here. And like, I would do specific things to make weight at a specific time, but then I would move on. And like, I'm like, okay, that was for a short period of time to do this goal. And now I'm back to just normal eating. By the way, I've never seen anyone have a more healthy relationship with food. He's like neutral. I love it.

And I think like in that context, diets could be interesting if you're using it for a short frame of reference for a very specific thing, and then you're getting back to a normal relationship. If you're capable of it. Yes, if you're capable. I think the thing is exactly what Lauren is saying about you is that you don't have an ounce of an eating disorder, right? You have a neutral relationship.

So if you're like, yeah, like, let me just do a little crash. I'll take this out. It doesn't have a long-term impact, right? People like me, I can't come back from it. Sure. Hot damn. What? Look at that ass in those pants.

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With that, let's get back into the show. So in that frame of context, my point is that diets could maybe be useful if you have the relationship I have with food and you're doing it for a specific short period of time, not Adderall, but like, you know, like say you want to go paleo for a little while. That's okay if you're doing it, if you're going to do sports or say you're a wrestler and you want to cut weight and you need to, you know, eat a lot of protein and not a lot of carbs i get that i think where people go wrong with diets is they look at it as a permanent solution for the rest of their life and it's unsustainable and they can't keep up with it and so they get stuck in this rhythm where they're constantly looking like they it becomes this very stressful thing where

it's like oh my god if i'm off it then i'm gonna then i'm gonna crash i don't know well you're gonna know more than me but no i think it's I mean, the problem with dieting is that it's a black and a white thing. I'm good, I'm bad. I hate that black and white solution. Well, I also think if we behaved in any relationship in our life, the way that we behave with food, we'd have no healthy relationships, right? The analogy I use often is when many people make a mistake with food, it's like they get a flat tire on their car, they get out of their car, they slash all the tires, torch the car, leave it in the middle of the highway, and then get upset that they don't have a car anymore.

It's like we don't turn on our brains with food, I think largely as a function of diet culture, giving us these standards of what it should be and never talking about, I don't know any, Whole30 does a little bit, talks about a sustainable, like how do you do this in your life? And also, maybe most importantly, as in all relationships, I'm sure you guys can attest to this, what do you do when you don't want to do what you're supposed to do? Like we all know like what it is to like eat clean or whatever that means. But what about the days that you don't want to? How do you get back on? It's like that's really relationship forming.

That's what I think we need to be talking about. I mean, yes, I think there are many people who are in an incredibly unhealthy relationship with sugar. They don't know it. They don't know that taking it out may give them the clarity that they need in order to do the next thing that I'm talking about. But the real thing is I'm talking about. But the real thing is like, well, how do you navigate life in a relationship with food?

That's the whole thing. What do you do? Like you have the piece of cake. Most people just go eat the whole cake and then they continue and they continue. They get into the self-hate. They get into the destructive space and they don't come back so easy. And that's like lost time. I just, I just know for me also, like, that is lost time. And I'll spend my life helping people to not have to lose time like that.

So how do you get someone like, say, okay, if we can all agree, like a slice of pizza is okay, once in a while, like, it's not going to kill you. For some people, absolutely. But how do we get to a point where like, you know, somebody maybe like, they never let themselves eat that slice of pizza, but then they do. And when they do, they're like, well, I already had the one. I might as well have the whole thing. Like, I think that is that the relationship we're talking about foods. Like, how do you kind of become okay? Like knowing once in a while, you're not going to be so strict and you're going to, you know, maybe have a cake or maybe have a pizza, but you can't, you know, then how do you not go over the edge?

It's literally, it's so funny because I treat very like smart, intelligent people. This is the skill that I'm teaching in the addictions world. We call it the abstinence violation effect, the AVE. And it's like, all people know how to do is like violate the abstinence. It's actually how people overdose from heroin, right? Because they go back to that original amount, they go hard, you know, they go big, they go big, and they go home. And then unfortunately, they die. And that opioid addiction is like, unbelievable. And a lot of what we teach people is like, okay, yeah, like you try not to have any slices of pizza

if that is what speaks to you, right? If you do, there's no harming, there's no self-harming, there's no shaming. You do a little research, figure out what happened. Like if you guys get in a big raging fight, I'm sure you sit down, tell them what happened. Hey, oh wow, maybe we should wake up a little earlier. Oh, maybe we should take some time apart. Okay, well, now we learned that. Okay,

great. Let's move on with our relationship. That's literally what I teach people to do with food. And the thing that I'm always so saddened by is that it's really not ingrained in people. It's ingrained with people to slice all those tires. And that's, it's a tremendous act of self forgiveness and self compassion getting into a new relationship with food and yourself. Yeah, I think it's kind of like, you know, you have a really good day and you work out really hard. Like I feel great today. And you know, I'm not going to like hurt my body. I'm not going to like eat bad maybe. But then maybe one day you're like, hey, I had that drink. Okay, well, maybe I'll have a few more. Or then like I had the slice of pizza, maybe I'll have the rest. And I think there's what there's a lack of moderation there that I don't think people understand. Like, it's almost like an all in or an all out mentality. It's like

how and I don't know what I'm getting at here. It's more like, how do you just balance a little bit of it? The word also is resiliency, right? There's a lack of resiliency, which I think it and there's a lack of forgiveness. And, and I think that when you really think about that, you I really think your relationship with food informs your relationship with yourself, right? And so, I mean, and then that way it's a one plus one is three, right? Because if you work on them both, then you're good to go. But I think that this is what goes wrong. I mean, A, I think there are some people, and this has been my experience in treating thousands of people, that moderation doesn't work. And then they're

on this endless cycle of trying to be a moderator when, you know, an apps more abstinence based model works better for them. Okay, so let's talk about those people. So say you're somebody that moderation, it just it doesn't register for you. It doesn't work. I'm one of those people. So we can just okay, you're sitting with you. How do you so when you think about, you know, let's say sugar, how do you regulate that? Now, do you say, okay, like I can't, like I just can't have any or I can have, okay, none.

So it's like. I do zero sugar. So walk us through a day of your eating, just because I need to understand what no sugar looks like. Are you replacing it with monk fruit sweetener? Like walk us through the whole thing. So, okay. So like, I'm a big, I love research.

And so like in my book, there's like a relationship, quiz, which is based on the Yale Food Addiction Scale. So like I really believe in – because not all addiction looks the same and I think there's a variance of this. So on that quiz, I'm a 12 out of 12. I got them all. So for me, like no sugars, no sugar. Now, am I talking about fruit? Absolutely not. Am I talking about like dairy?

Absolutely not. Like, not so crazy. But I think this thing with monk fruit is really tricky because for some people that monk fruit ends up being a little bit like artificial sweetener and tricking the brain into thinking that's what sweet is. So it's kind of like taking a narco when you used to be addicted to heroin. Yes. Okay. Okay. A little bit. A little Adderall when you used to be addicted to heroin. I love this. Yes. Okay. Okay. A little bit. A little Adderall when you used to be into meth. I'm so into these analogies. We were really, you and I could get along. That's right. That's exactly right. And I think the problem with artificial sweeteners, and for some people, monk fruit is that then you're eating an apple being like, well, this ain't sweet. Like I eat a banana and I'm like, this is some good stuff.

So, you know, right now I'm into two things. I'm very into Ezekiel bread because the thing is also I don't eat flour. Sugar and flour are very much the same. When you grind up the flour, your brain reads it the same as sugar. So I don't eat grain flour either. I really promote that for people that I work with who have the same problem that I'm talking about. But I'm very into Ezekiel bread because the sprouted grain all day. So I have that with like, I don't know, some eggs, something exciting.

I mean, or I'm very into like a quia oatmeal with like a non-dairy. But it's very hard to find a non-dairy yogurt that doesn't have a ton of sugar. I put on my sweater and went to Whole Foods and did some research. Coconut Cult has a good one. I would like to know what your opinion is on it. I don't know them. Okay. I'm going to send you them. I can't wait. Yeah. It's like a probiotic. I don't think there's any sugar in it.

I'm so excited. Okay. How do you identify- Wait, hold on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We didn't get to lunch. We didn't finish our day of eating. We just started breakfast. People want to hear this.

I know that, but how do you identify if somebody has a full sugar addiction compared to somebody who's maybe just overeating? It's a really good question because I don't think you should have to give up sugar if you don't have to. You know what I mean? So this- That's kind of what I'm trying to get at. I'm going to surprise you don't have it.

No, I know that, but I'm saying like, because I imagine in your world, you meet all sorts of people. Absolutely. And you have to be able to identify like who has an addiction that is an actual addiction and who's somebody that just has a very bad relationship with their diet, doesn't know how to diet properly. Absolutely. Well, I think that the other thing that I think is so key in all of this from research, so there's actually no evidence base in like any weight loss or the evidence base only says one thing. And it'll make sense, I think, to all of us, which

is self determination is really the thing that helps people to make permanent change, which means like, you decided on your own, it's your ownership, right? So mostly, before I work with people, I have them take the quiz, you know, and then I have and then we kind of reason it out. Couple questions from the quiz, just give us like one or two. Great. So do you eat, you know, these foods despite negative consequences physically? So like, has your doctor said to you, hey, you got to like, like from a diabetes, are you pre-diabetic? You got to eat a lot of sugar and then you like go home and eat an ice cream cone. This happens across the board. Have you made multiple attempts to quit and not been able to do it, right? Do you

eat more than you intend to? This is a big one, right? So you're like, I swear, it's like only the serving size of the Ben and Jerry. You're done with the whole thing, right? So all my answers are no to that. Great. So that's good. I mean, for you, it sure is. So do you want all no's?

Well, yeah. You want all no's. Yours are no's too. He has no attachment to food. Well, yeah, but I mostly want to hear, so like I'm trying to get out here is like like as we go through this, if there's people that are listening and like, okay, say that you are a mixed, say you're all knows we can. Okay. So if we don't have that issue, but say there's people that are all yeses, then you would

say, okay, like maybe there's an addiction here. But if there's, what if it's like, hey, I answered yes to some things and no to others. Like, what do you do there? I mean, I think the thing is addiction is a progressive illness. Okay. So you think you'll progressively get to the yeses. Yeah. And here's the other thing I, again, with self-determination. I think there

is a resetting point that is incredibly important for people who are struggling, who have some yeses, right? And the book has a 66-day plan. Now, let me tell you something. When I was going and selling this book, a lot of unhappy publishers with that number, right? Because they were like, can it just be 28 days? Can't you not include flour? I was like, no, but you don't have to buy it. The 66 days, I went to the research because I was like, when is the first day that you get otomacy? Like, when is the first day where this is a more of an intuitive, and the first day was 66 days. So the whole fourth part of this book is me being like, okay, now you go figure it out right like i don't because it is such an individual process right so i don't know maybe after 66 days you can do monk fruit i don't know and no one wants to be on a fucking diet their whole life i mean i

don't and i do it for a living right right you know and i don't want anyone telling me what to do i'm a defiant girl like you know yeah And I also think every like everyone's different. I just found out that my blood type doesn't do well with gluten and coffee. Right. So I cut out gluten. It's actually okay. I found a bread I really like. I'm obsessed with this bread called Bread Seriously. Oh, cool. I'm going to send you a couple things. I want to know what you think of these. Okay, I'm excited. Okay, so I'll send you the coconut yogurt and the bread. Great. We're making a grocery list. And then I cut coffee out and replaced probably 90% of it with matcha. Okay, yeah.

You guys love matcha. I don't know much about matcha. I like it because I feel like I don't get a crash. That's amazing. You have to look into what works for you. Wait, hold up. We're going to take a quick break to talk about ancestry health now that i'm a parent ancestry health is even more important because i just feel like you can cross off a few things on your list when it comes to knowing about your family's inherited health risks we talk about this a lot on the show the best way to predict what's going on and what's going to happen with your health in the future is to look at what's happened previously to

previous family members, previous generations that have been in your family. And so Ancestry Health is an amazing tool to figure out what's actually going on and what you need to look for. I think so many people wait till it's too late to figure out some of the health complications they can potentially have later in life. And I personally am all about preventative care in every single area, preventative beauty, preventative health. So this is like one of those things that you can add to your list. It's incredibly preventative. To get micro with you, their most advanced genetic testing technology is called next generation sequencing. And Ancestry Health now looks at more places in your DNA than 23andMe, giving you better odds of

determining that you're at a lower genetic risk for some of the most commonly inherited conditions. Ancestry Health allows you to understand what health risks could be passed down from one generation to the next. Many of you listened to our episode a couple weeks back with Sondra talking about how she overcame breast cancer. And did you know that one in eight women develop breast cancer in their lifetime? About five to 10% of those have an inherited genetic risk and stress tree health can detect up to 80% of the DNA differences linked to the most common form of inherited breast cancer. So it can help you get ahead of it, prevent it, beat it, defeat it, and make sure that it doesn't become a much bigger problem in your life.

It's so easy. You get this box delivered to your house, you take it out, you spit in this vial, and then you send it back. Super quick and efficient. Find out what your DNA says about genetic risk with Ancestry Health. Head to our URL at ancestry.com slash skinny to get your Ancestry Health kit today. That's ancestry.com slash skinny. guinea. I believe this so wholeheartedly because it's research-based, right? So I think we all need like some holding, like reparenting, whatever you want to call it when it comes to redefining our relationship with food. But just like parenting, I think there's a day that you got to go self-determine and figure out what works for you. And I think that this tire slicing metaphor really comes in here because if you're training that, you know, and someone's like, well, what do you think about this protein bar? And I'll say, why don't you go see if it works for you? And then you decide what

you think of this protein. A hundred percent. Couldn't agree with you more. We have forgotten that we have these beautiful brains. Instead of someone telling you what you like, you have to be your own guru and decide what works for you. Thousand percent. Like I said, we were talking earlier on this show and it's like, let's say we have 300 episodes or so. And like with that, let's say there's, you know, maybe 250 guests have been on here. And like, what we try to do is I'm hoping people, there's a segment of our audience that's listening to be like, wow, I really resonate with what she's saying.

I really like it. I'm identifying. I'm going to go and reach out to you later. And like, that's great. But there's some people it's like, maybe it doesn't. I don like it. I'm going to identify. I'm going to go and reach out to you later. And like, that's great. But for some people, it's like, maybe it doesn't. I don't know. Like people have to be like, people have to do their own research and decide what works for them.

And they can't take everything as a blanket statement. It's something to follow. Well, I mean, I think that's what I'm saying. I mean, if somebody tells you that there's only one way, run away. You know what I mean? And the thing is, I come from the eating disorder world where they don't believe in food addiction. I mean, literally, like, I'm like Christopher Columbus in the eating disorder world being like, yeah, so, you know, I think food addiction is a thing. They're like, no, world is flat. I mean. That's because you were a practitioner of it. only moderation, only this. And I'm like, what do you mean only like that's, and it does really not take into account diabetes, insulin resistance. I mean, there's a part of the breaking up a sugar

model that is the model for pre diabetes, diabetes, because I also think that people get in a weird rhythm where like, say that you find somebody that's promoting x diet. And so you're like, I really identify. And so then you only seek out people that validate that diet and you never go outside of that and i think that lauren and i always talk about on the show like we're learning at the same time like i'm learning from you right now at the same time with the audience yeah and it's interesting because we we do this so often it's like okay like i really like what she said like but also a lot of times we're like taking something from guests and leaving others so it's not like you have to be somebody that's willing to have an

open mind it's like okay some things are going to work for me and some are not, but I'd rather have that than just talking to the same type of person over and over and over to check a box to match what I like. I think the relationship metaphor is so important here too, which is to say the relationship that you guys had when you were like 12 is not the relationship you guys have today. It's evolved. I think my relationship with food, when I started breaking up with sugar 11 years ago, is not remotely the same as my relationship today. I've grown. I like different things. I don't know. I'm just more capable of being able to manage things. And I think, and that's, I don't know, like how we need to be in all relationships and in life, be open-minded, make mistakes, come back. The core of my

knowledge, like I don't believe in intuitive eating. I believe in something called, I've named it humble eating, right? And humble eating to me is like I know what works for me and I know what doesn't and then I trust my intuition, right? So I don't, I mean, I'm having lunch with my cousin today. I'm not like, oh my god, you know, where are we going? I'm like, I'll figure it out. We'll be fine. It sounds like you almost are doing an AA for food. And it sounds like people are fighting you against it because like you said, they don't really think it's an addiction, but it is.

Yeah. For a lot of people, it looks exactly like a substance addiction. And I mean that in both ways, right? I mean in like the bottoming out of it, but I actually really mean it in the like resurrection, phoenix rising part of it. I have watched people's lives transform, like relationships, taking risks, jobs, loving themselves, and all a function. I have this Facebook group.

I watch these people. I'm like, one's going, you know, jumping out of airplanes. The other one's like making up with her husband. The other one's like breaking up with her husband. And it's all a function of, and I think there's a piece of like, God, I mean, being in this diet cycle just wrecks your soul. I mean, it's a recipe to kill a spirit, being in a constant failure cycle and finding a solution to it. It's, being in a constant failure cycle and finding a solution to it.

It's like magic in a way. It also is hard. And I'm just speaking from pregnancy. When you gain a lot of weight quickly, it screws with your identity. Absolutely. There's so many different layers, like you said. It's not just, it's just, it doesn't have to do with food. There's so many different things that play into it.

And you can't really understand that because you're not attached. No, but one thing we were saying about addiction there is like, we've had some addiction episodes here with, you know, addicts on the show. And to your point, like some and a lot of really successful cases that are people that have risen like a phoenix. And what I what I got from those is that during the time that they were abusing substances, they really weren't themselves or allowed to be themselves or like living under a fog and not allowed to be who they really were. And as soon as they got clean and got rid of that substance that was controlling them or that, you know, had control of them. The reason I think that they rise like that and they become is because they actually get to be themselves for once. And like so many of us that don't have addictions don't understand that. But

imagine like going through life, being controlled by something you don't necessarily, I mean, it's a real thing, obviously, we've had enough conversations to know that. But I think the reason that they become so successful after they can get clean is they're finally able to be who they really are. I think that's and I think, you know, it's all about the food. And it's not about the food, right. And I think the other thing, which is, when you put for me at least, like when I stopped eating the sugar, then I sort of got what I had to start to do. Like my emotional spiritual work began because I wasn't so fogged out.

I mean, in that way, the life I live today is full of like joy and love and risk-taking and amazing. And like, I feel things big time, big time. And I had to learn how to not be so feelings phobic because then I didn't have to numb myself all of the time. And so I think there's this big piece of this recovery effort with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with all of it that you have to really relearn how to do life when you take that numbing substance out.

And that's what I see in that parallel between addiction and food addiction. It's like, use it, you know, as a numb. What are some self-care things that you do now? I know you mentioned meditation, but can you walk us through a few things that you do that you fill your life with? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'm a very high maintenance gal. Hello. I sometimes start. If I don't get my breath working in my fucking three minute freezing cold shower, you better watch out. I need eight hours of sleep. Okay, so I can come over. I'll be fine.

Facial massage. She finished her morning routine like 10 minutes before we got here. I'm telling you. Sometimes I start patients at 10 and I'm like, I don't know if I can do it. Don't put me on a fucking conference call before 11 a.m. No, I'm with you. So if I had in my ideal world, you know, I believe hardcore morning pages like I'm a more, you know, Julia, because I mean, I am. No, I'm with you. So if I had in my ideal world, you know, I believe hardcore morning pages, like I'm a more, you know, Julia, because like, I mean, I just, I wake up so crazy. Like if you

talk to me before all of this, you'd be like, I don't think you should come on the podcast. You're a little, you know, you're bonkers. You should do the morning pages. You're talking to me? Yeah. They're so good. And I don't know, just across the board, I just think so many people I admire do that. So I'm a big morning pages person. Or like my version of that is, listen, we know a lot of people- Checking Twitter is not the morning pages. No, but my version of that is also like, if you go in a journal or like I read in this book called The Daily Stoic, which I've talked about, like I think some form of journaling, getting your thoughts. Just letting it out. Yeah. So you do the morning pages.

That's kind of a version of morning pages. A little different. Yeah. I do the morning pages. Love them. of a version of morning pages. A little different. Yeah, I do the morning pages. Love them. I always think about like my own spiritual journey. People are like, you're amazing. And I'm like, no, no, no, none of this by choice. Like all of it via desperation. So I picked up all these habits from like usually like in a very crazy desperate space.

And then I was like, oh, look, I feel so much better from this. So the other thing, I'm a big transcendental meditator. Okay, so this is where you went and you learned how to meditate for a day and you have a word, right? I have a mantra, yes. But you can't tell anyone. And I don't. Yeah, I wouldn't tell anyone. I know, I'm freaked out by it. Yes. So you do it 10 and 10 or do you do 20 full? I try to do 20 and 20. Oh my God. I know. I do it imperfect. I believe in imperfection. I believe so much that something is better than nothing. I always try to get one in.

And I actually try to – I sometimes do 10 in the morning. I think the afternoon one I think is where all my energy comes from. I get so much done in a day. And I believe it's the function of the afternoon meditation. I really do. Do you just sit there and close your eyes and say your word? Kind of, yeah. So you can do it anywhere?

Oh, yeah, totally. Okay. Yeah, I try not to be that high maintenance about like location things like that i'd really like like a wyoming landscape i could use some buffalo like earplugs eye mask no i try to like because i feel so high maintenance all you know i sometimes i feel like such a soft shell crab you know in a hard hard crab life and then i'm a bit you know i believe in prayer feel like such a soft shell crab, you know, in a hard, hard crab life. And then I'm a big, you know, I believe in prayer, I do. And I so I have a bunch of prayers that I kind of try to just connect with, you know, the divine or whatever you want to call it, I just, for me, it's like, when I'm full of myself, like not a good idea comes to me. And I think in my experience of just being in this world and being blessed with like, writing a book and getting to

help people like it's just been always from intuition and what I think is almost like a download and I just like to connect to something bigger and I'm big big big into that the other thing I'm really big into is connection you know that research that talks about you know the opposite of addiction is connection so I'm very into like checking in with my people you know know, like, and I'm big into teachers. To me, like, having teachers and, you know, having their podcast back when we were able to go see them, going to Kripalu, going to something like that, being, just always being filled with new ideas, because it helps me to inform the work I do. I mean, I sit with people all of the time who are suffering, and it's like, I need to be having a fluid ideas and, and an open mind

to be understanding where they're coming from and a constant curiosity about how to be able to help guide them. And that is so interesting that you say that because I was reading scar tissue by Anthony Kiedis all about his addiction. And he said, the whole thing of AA people don't realize is not that you're going to AA to get help. It's that you're going to AA to help other people get sober. Yeah. And that's sort of like what you're saying. It's like to keep you sober from sugar. Absolutely. You're helping other people stay sober. And I think to keep me in like my best self, like there is a prayer actually it's from AA and it says like relieve me of the bondage of self. And it's like when I think about myself and my addictions, like it's like I'm so like, like my life felt like the size of a postage stamp, you know, so small, so self-absorbed,

so scared. And what I find is in these practices and in not eating sugar, which is like one of my big practices, I just, I'm allowed, I can be expansive and I can do things and I can, and I think a big part is the rely is the helping other people and receiving help right like there's so many people right now that care that I'm on your web that I'm on this podcast because I was so nervous to be on it there's like why I don't know I'm just made that way no I'm like having the best time I think it was really wasted energy it's such waste anyone that comes on this podcast do not be nervous yeah please don't it's the best time I always think about it like like basically like we I mean we have the benefit of having the equipment,

but it's like if we were at lunch or dinner. I'm literally just so happy to be with you guys. I'm having the best time. But I think what I'm saying more is when I get nervous, I have a list of things I do, right? I reach out to people. I do prayer. I do meditation.

I do breath. I love breath. I'm a trained shaman. I'm a trained Tibetan bowl healer. I'm a trained Reiki master. Have you ever done Tibetan? Have you guys ever got the bowls on you? Hold on. One, I want to do that because we've never done it. But two, I went to a Reiki master in San Diego one time. I've never done it before. She turned me on at this moment. I've only been able to do it once. We were there for what, 90 minutes? It felt like four seconds to me. Ain't it? What the hell's going on? Hey, but listen to this one. What is going on there?

I mean, it was amazing. The baby was breech in my stomach. It was breech. And I went to this Reiki master. Her name is Sage at Encinitas Acupuncture and Massage. And I felt the baby flip. She flipped the freaking baby. And normally, I don't believe things like that.

But I went to the doctor with her literally a few days before and it was i came to him i go the baby flipped he goes oh what are you talking and we went back and it was actually true so i was like oh holy shit oh no oh no i acupuncture all that i mean i had like fibroids and i went back and he's like where did they go and i was like you know maybe we should do acupuncture on Pixie. It's so helpful, huh? Oh, again, I believe in like the oldest forms of prescription. Sure. Why? Of course, it's amazing. And because it treats mind, body, spirit.

That's like, what are we doing? Just treating this one thing and we're like suppressing all of it. And like, ugh. Well, that was my point earlier is like we've gotten away from the things that have worked for thousands and thousands of years that probably take longer and are a little bit harder to do and require you to look inward and face a lot of things in a much more difficult way. But we're not doing it anymore. And so we're just doing these quick fixes. I think that's why the world's in a lot of pain. Me too. Nobody wants to wait.

I'm trained in dialectical behavioral therapy, which is the treatment of borderline personality disorder and chronic suicide. That's like my training, my background. And the program developer, Marsha Linehan, one of the main parts of it when you're trying to help someone not kill themselves is teaching them distress tolerance, right? And because if your coping skill will be trying to kill yourself all the time when you're in distress, it's not going to work out well. I say the same thing with the food, right? Like if you're going to constantly turn to food as your skill and we don't have a whole new skill set, then you actually can't get well.

I think this is an important piece. And as you're talking, Michael, about the world, it's like we have lost all frustration tolerance. I mean, there is just not a minute. And I think like I even just think about if we're sitting at dinner, we're all sitting at dinner. Oh, who sings that song? Nobody thinks for a minute about it.

We're just like, here, let me think about, oh, let me type it in. Okay, yeah, this is who. And that's, I think, the piece of meditation that's so important is that it just allows for you to slow down. And I think we've also forgotten about our own internal wisdom. So that's what I'm saying. This is going to be a statement that people, a lot of people on this show are going to get mad at me. I know. It's's what I'm saying. This is going to be a statement that people, a lot of people on this show are going to get mad at me. I know it's probably of all the statements

people go and they find like, let's talk about diet specifically, they find a diet that they think works for them. Turns out then it doesn't work for them. Instead of taking accountability, like I was looking for a quick fix and didn't actually want to do the work for myself and didn't want to go do the things that I know I should do to get healthy. They attack the dietitian or they attack the person. It's like, listen, that person's not perfect either. But like, I believe in a concept of extreme ownership, where like, in my life, everything is my fault. If this company is not going well, regardless of somebody else screws up, it's my fault. If this podcast isn't going well, it's my fault. If it's any, everything is my fault. But that enables me to take action to

improve my life, right? And I think people, it's because they're looking for a quick fix. And if it doesn't work, instead of taking accountability, like, wait, I can change my life habits to take accountability for myself, they go to look and blame others and attack them. And it's like, it's really not about them. It's about you and your relationship with yourself. And even if the other person is at fault, you know, we're the only people that can change. This person could be the shittiest person in the world. And maybe they're doing bad practices and you shouldn't have gone to them. Right. But at the end of the day, like you are accountable for doing them in the first place.

Yeah. And I think like that's the, I mean, that's the piece of, I think the beauty of like personal accountability is like other people, you know, in DBT, they have this part and they're saying, you know, your problem, you may not have caused all of your problems,

but you can solve them, right? Like your problems may not be of your making. All you can solve them, right? Like, your problems may not be of your making. All this bad stuff may have happened to you, but right now you can heal. Because I think a lot of this is shame and blame. And I think those are really toxic emotions that I think are necessary. I mean, we ought to work through them. But at the end of the day, I love what you're saying, which is, yeah, like, I'm responsible for me and my part in it. I just think you can't heal unless you're willing to be fully accountable to yourself. Like you can blame everybody. And listen, some of that blame is probably warranted. Like maybe there's somebody

you're working with that's not a good person, or maybe they're giving you a bad recommendation. Like, sure. But at the end of the day, like it does you no good as an individual unless you're willing to take accountability and look for answers that are right for you. Well, all relationships are transactional, right? So if one person changes in the relationship, then the relationship has changed, right? Yes. That's a very good quote. Say that one more time. Try again. But all relationships are transactional. And so if one person in the relationship changes, the relationship has changed. I love that. That's a big, if you're in my therapy, that's like a big one in my therapy.

I like that a lot. And I'm always like, and so isn't it good that we're here? That's your next book. I am asking a lot. And I'm always like, and so isn't it good that we're here? That's your next book. I am asking a selfish question. I know someone with borderline personality disorder, and I'm sure there's a lot of people listening. I didn't realize that you, like, that was like the foundation of what you specialized in. Can you talk about that a little bit?

About borderline personality disorder? Yes. And is there a cure? Like, what's, how do you deal with someone like that? To me, because I treat that, or I have treated that condition, and it's actually really interesting. The reason I use it in in the food addiction model is that one of the one of the symptoms of people with BPD is that they're chronically invalidated, and they're chronically invalidated from a very early age. And so part of how that condition starts is from being chronically invalidated. And so if you

think about it, like, so I'm hurt, and then this person isn't listening, so then I get a little louder, and then they stop listening, and then they're still not listening, but a little bit more angry at me, and then I get bigger. And if you know people with that condition, you're like, oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And so part of the beauty of what the DBT model is that it's a very validating treatment model. And when I think of people who struggle with food and weight, I mean, talk about being chronically invalidated. Be on a diet for your whole life thinking, you know, that'll do something to your personality, if you ask me. Back to your question. Well, you said the cure is D what?

DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy. That's the treatment. Okay, what is that? It's a multimodal. It's actually, it's fascinating. It's actually probably the best researched model of all therapy that exists. And it actually treats a lot of things, right? So it helps to treat borderline personality disorder, also helps to treat depression, eating disorders, addictions, like it's across the board and it's incredibly well researched. What's interesting about it, so Marsha Linehan, the treatment founder of it, so she decided one day, she woke up and she decided she wanted to cure suicide. She was a

suicidologist. By the way, decreases suicide attempts by 50%, so she did a really great job. That's incredible. So anyway, so she goes and she's like, okay, she's a behaviorist. And so she goes to all these borderlines and she's like, I'm going to do a behavioral model. And she says to all these people with BPD, okay, we're going to change. And they're like, do you not understand how much pain I'm in? Oh, my God. I'm leaving the treatment. Okay.

So she's like, okay, so I got to be more validating. So she does a validation-based model. So she says to all these people, God, it must be so hard for you. Gosh, these problems must be. And they're like, I need help. Help me change. And what Marsha saw, which is also the key to life, side note, is that it takes a synthesis of these two, right? Change and validation and change and validation, right? And I think in fairness, like the middle path is always the way. And so she basically made a behavioral model with a lot of Zen principles in it. And she decided that it's a big skill set deficit, which I believe

wholeheartedly in food and weight disorders. I believe people actually don't know how to get well. And in diet culture are fed all of this terrible talk about fake news where, I mean, just the amount of, like I had a woman who's like, yeah, I did the caffeine diet. And I was like, that is the saddest thing I ever heard in my life, like that you thought that was a reasonable thing to do to yourself. Even just in general, like just some, oh, I'm going to do Adderall. That's what I'm going to do to help myself. It's heartbreaking to me, to be honest.

So to answer your question, what happens in BPD is that there's just this chronic invalidation and then a new, and then a snow groove that is created in behavior that is a coping skill right and so it's idealization and devaluation and relationships and it's chronic anger and it's sometimes parasuicidal feelings and behaviors and and this chronic and it's and it's a very chronic condition now in my industry a lot of people are like it's like a scarlet letter i'm trained in the treatment of it so i just think it's a very chronic condition. Now, in my industry, a lot of people are like, it's like a scarlet letter. I'm trained in the treatment of it. So I just think it's a condition that we can treat, right?

And one of my teachers, he had a woman who he treated with the condition. And she came back to him and said, do I still have borderline? And he said, I don't know. Let's look at the criteria. And they looked at it, you know, and she didn't have it. And so he erased it off her chart. And again, I think culturally, it's like, you have this thing. And I and i just don't buy that like i don't buy that label those judgments i think they harm us significantly i i even and i'm an addiction therapist i even take issue with addiction if

you're not using it for good you know what i mean like i'll just say like okay fine you have an unhealthy relationship with food let's take addiction off the table let's heal you let's get so clarified so like you will you if like, okay, so someone's labeling themselves an addict and they just keep calling themselves an addict and you say, Hey, like, how do you, you're saying that label is not necessarily. They're living in the narrative. It's like, right. Love it. Yes, exactly. Someone's saying like, well, I'm an addict and I can't get well. I'm like, well, let's take that off the table. Let's use a different, let's use different languaging here. I mean, there's plenty of research that supports that. Yeah, I mean, you got to write a new story.

And if your story is I'm an addict who can't get well, then, you know, we have big, you know, I'm no magician. With what you said about that woman that did the borderline personality test, it sounds like she switched the verbiage so the borderline personality person came to their own conclusion instead of they don't like being told. Yeah, I mean, isn't that the way we are like okay like i just i think it's magic when people can own their own narrative and own their own story and especially with food like people there are so many myself included i mean i was i just was a hopeless case for 25 years i mean i've really lost time and it's like the idea that there's like a solution that I can live in this happy life and then help other people to do it with me

is like, I can't even believe it. I don't think you lost any time. I think this set you up to do what you do effectively. Thank you. I actually believe that too. I don't regret it. You know, it's one of the problems that I have with the state of the world right now

is that, you know, us as human beings, we want to be able to categorize things. We want to be like, this is that thing. This is the same with people. So we associate labels like that's an addict. That's a person that's an entrepreneur. That's a creator. That's, you know, that's a Republican. That's a Democrat. It's a huge problem because what it does is it doesn't give people the freedom to go into different directions. So like, I try to be, I try to never associate labels with people I work with, people it's myself, people in my life, because what it does is it puts them in a limiting box

where like somebody could think one way in a conservative way and they can also think in another way, in a liberal way, depending on the subject. But if you put somebody in a box, then it doesn't give them the freedom or the ability to move outside of that box. And it doesn't give you the freedom to look at someone in a different way.

Well, it's completely rooted in fear and like like fear is a full time job, right? So when I'm saying to you about like, why I do all these things in the morning, it's to open me out of fear. So like, fear just is full of blind spots. So it's like, yeah, like, I'm an addict, I'm scared. I'm gonna die. It's like, I mean, probably, right. But if we can just in DBT, we say we're not allowed to use any judgment word so if somebody says well that person's manipulative we'll say what do you mean by manipulative can you describe what you mean by that right and when you describe what you mean by manipulative by the way people are kind of dope right like many people are pretty amazing if you really look at the behavior

narcissistic personality disorder yeah this is the new one i just learned about and i'm probably gonna flub it history histrionic what are the differences between those three because the person in my life i'm not quite sure which we should have an offline meeting which yeah which what are the two differences between all those going back to psychopathology okay i'm going there i'm going i mean i think the part of i I mean, I see people so differently just because I've logged so many hours in a chair. And in that chair, you know, I'm always looking for the good in people. I mean, for better or for worse.

I think this part of narcissism is this bubble that is created as a function of trauma. I mean, I could have a whole different conversation about trauma because I think it is such an important and overlooked piece of why people are struggling so much probably the biggest piece right yeah definitely and by the way big t little t 16.8 point font so this person part of narcissism is that it becomes a self-absorbed process but also this you know pushing out process as a function of a narcissistic wound right so that's when the is created. And this histrionic piece is a bit more of the flamboyant, you know, I guess you would call it like drama queen, dramatic piece, but always, personality disorders are almost always a function of something happening. I mean, I think that's the piece is that, you know, our story

takes a turn, and then we don't remember to turn back or we can't turn back or we're not given the tools to turn back. And then that becomes something. I deal with a lot of end stage people and deal with a lot of people in their 50s. I mean, I've seen people change. I believe so much in the capacity of the human spirit to change. I mean, I guess I couldn't do my job if I didn't. But I really believe it because I see it all the time.

So you could cure narcissistic personality? I mean, I have someone I'm working with right now who I, yeah, I don't think I can cure anything. I think, I don't think, I don't actually would never say I could cure something, but there are moments in my life in which I have been in interactions with people where their willingness and their openness meets sort of my curiosity and knowledge, and they're able to rewrite a script or heal in a way that they didn't know possible. It's like the right synergy. But it goes back to the label thing where like, if somebody that you're helping has been labeled that way for 40, 50 years and told

that, then eventually you start to believe like, that's the way. And if people say, hey, you can never get better and you can never cure, then like they believe that narrative, I assume. Well, the man that I treat that sort of has narcissistic traits, you know, his kids were like, you're a narcissist. And he said, can you believe that they said that to me? And I said, well, you know, here's the parts of you that I see that are narcissistic. Do you want to look at them? And then we started to look at them. And then he started to understand what empathy was. And I gave him that Brene Brown video on empathy. Have you ever seen it? No, you have to send it.

Oh, my God. I have to send it. It's literally the best. I need to tell you 100 stories about it, too. It's so good. OK. It, like, registered. And listen, he comes from so much trauma.

You know, in his whole life, he's just been protecting himself, right? And just wanting to be successful and at any cost. And he was like, I didn't realize. That's what we talked to a psychologist and he was saying that it's hard to get that one because they don't, they are so narcissistic. They don't see that they have narcissistic personality. It's like psychosis. It's like psychosis. Like they don't think it's a problem. It's like anorexia, by the way, too. Right? Anorexia is like what we call an egocentronic disease, which is like, I don't think there's a problem. Where like binge eating is like, help me right now. It's ecodistonic. Like,

I need this off. Like, you're like 20 pounds. I can get this off me right now. So there are a lot of conditions that are very hard to treat. Those are three that are incredibly hard to treat. There's not even an ounce of it eminent space on anorexia. Like, it's so roll the dice. It's incredible. Before you go, you have to finish telling us what you eat in a day because Michael interrupted you. And you know that I will not forget about it. You were on your bowl of oatmeal. Yeah, that bowl of oatmeal said this quia oatmeal because I'm really sensitive. So if I have like even quick oats, like my body reads it not so great.

So this quia oatmeal is amazing. And I have like I'm just I had a tooth removed and I became really dairy intolerant. So I don't do dairy right now. You know, it's like not that exciting, but I have like a beautiful salad for lunch with like some, you know, maybe some feta cheese, a bunch of salad dressing and, you know, maybe some corn in it, some protein in it. And then I'm very into a midday snack. I'm very into a four time a day eating like four to five, four to three and a half to five hours apart. I come from big time night eating, big time night binging. And what the research shows and what I found in my own life is that having this what we call meal regulation is actually the evidence base of binge eating. It's

almost like I have to myself and help people to like kind of sleep train, you know, like, we don't, I didn't have good regulation skills. So I had to re-regulate and I actually really value that as a skill. And so I usually have these like amazing protein bars called Atlas bars. They're like, I've been, I'm just constantly on the search for the perfect protein bar and they've come pretty close or I'll have like some nuts and some fruit and then you know dinner i don't know some sushi or some like quinoa and some fish and some or i'm very into chickpea pasta very into because i think it's like what's your favorite brand bonza period bonza okay period okay bonza's amazing i'd like some chickpea pasta one i. I've made you chickpea pasta, motherfucker. Sounds like you like everything. Yeah. I'm open to everything.

I've never heard him say in the whole hundred years I've known him that he's craving anything. There's no attachment. God bless. Yeah. That is the opposite of me. I have other problems. You do have other problems. I have to deal with.

Tell us about your book, Pimp It Out. Well, you know, I wrote this book because everybody's like, what's a great book on sugar addiction? And I was like, there isn't a good book on sugar addiction. And so I wrote it. And I think the thing I love about it is it's really actionable. And it's really about what I was saying, like getting people into self determination. And so I think it is for people who are like, I might have a problem. And it's for people who are like, oh, my God, across the board, I have a problem. I think it really walks people step by step it talks a lot about dbt it talks a lot about the

skills it's not it's so about food when it comes to food addiction and it's so not about food when it comes to food addiction and the whole fourth part of the book is about like what to do when you don't want to do what you're supposed to do because every single diet book that i've read in my life never talks about that they're're like, yeah, four ounces of turkey. I'm like, obviously four ounces of turkey, like who doesn't know that? And the only other thing I think is, listen, I'm not a nutritionist. I'm a therapist. I think the nutrition part is rather easy. I think the behavior part is really where the rubber meets the road so smart and the spiritual piece too of in like bringing this into a relationship like and then after the food relationship of healing yourself

because there's a lot of self as we're talking about and using adderall to lose weight there's a lot of harm done to self and i think the book addresses all of that and if not i do so what i know what it's called but just for for the audience, what is it called? Where can they find it? And where can they find you on Instagram? Absolutely. It's called Breaking Up With Sugar. And it's everywhere.

It's on Amazon. It's on Barnes & Noble. It's anywhere you can buy a book. If you are into my voice, you could listen to me read the audio book. Your voice is great. I love it. And your ass is yours. And I'm on Instagram, Molly Carmel.

Easy peasy. Perfect. You're incredible. Come back on anytime. I would love to. That was so informative, and I think just the audience is going to love this. See, nothing to be nervous about.

I know. You did great. Such wasted time. Easy peasy. Such wasted time. We always think that. It's always like, fuck, I wasted all this energy on nothing. I'm going to learn one day.

If you or anyone you know is looking for a helpline for support resources or treatment options for eating disorders, we wanted to include a helpline at the end of this episode. The one to call is 800-931-2237. Wait, don't go. Do you want to win a copy of Breaking Up With Sugar? All you have to do is head over to my latest Instagram at the Skinny Confidential and tell me who you want to see featured next on the my latest Instagram at the skinny confidential and tell me who you want to see featured next on the podcast. We are taking notes.

We are listening to you guys. If you want someone to come back that's already been on, let us know. If you want someone fresh and new, let us know. Just keep us updated and get so excited for our next episode. It's a good one.